The first set of College Football Playoff rankings are not even out and -- shocker! -- people are already upset.
Specifically, the folks in the state of Oklahoma seem to be a little miffed over the fact that Ohio State has moved into the top three in both the AP and the Coaches Polls. While the Buckeyes have been ahead of the Sooners for several weeks now, it seems that the upcoming rankings from the selection committee are causing everybody rehash the issue this week. At the heart of the matter is not surprisingly OU’s 31-16 victory in Columbus, which quarterback Baker Mayfield says should be a huge factor in his team moving past the one he, you know, beat on the field.
“There’s got to be a head-to-head matchup. If you talk about head-to-head, they beat Penn State and both of them are still ranked higher than us, I think. I don’t understand it,” Mayfield said on Monday, according to OU Daily. “It’s just interesting to see how people view us, not necessarily that I’m looking for approval — I couldn’t care less what they say because the final rankings are what matters so that’ll be down the road. (I’m) interested to see what they say but we’ve just got to put our heads down and go to work. If we take care of business (for) the rest of the season then we should be in the top four, no doubt in my mind.”
Head coach Lincoln Riley also waddled into the rankings business at his press conference earlier this week.
“If they think like that, then we have a broken system and we need to get new people making decisions, if that is how they think,” Riley said. “A lot of this is going to play out. A lot of ball is left to be played with everybody in the country. We have the toughest and the best conference — top to bottom — right now in the country and we have a lot of big games coming up. I think those things will take care of themselves.”
We’ll find out just what the committee thinks come Tuesday night but it’s not hard to think that both the signal-caller and his coach have a point. It will be interesting to see if the Sooners end up leap-frogging either Ohio State or Penn State this week but for now they might want to worry about their Bedlam rivals on Saturday afternoon as the more pressing issue to deal with.